Galena: Lead Rush Capital and Grant's Hometown

Long before the California Gold Rush of eighteen forty-nine, there was a mineral rush in the upper Mississippi Valley that most Americans have forgotten. The town of Galena, Illinois, was at its center, and for two decades it was one of the wealthiest cities in the entire country.

The ore that gave Galena its name, galena lead, had drawn Native Americans to this region for centuries. Sauk and Fox peoples were mining it when the French arrived in the sixteen hundreds. After the United States took control of the territory, Congress formally organized a federal lead-mining district in eighteen oh-seven, and prospectors flooded in from across the country. By the end of the eighteen twenties, Galena rivaled Chicago in size. At the height of the boom in eighteen forty-five, the upper Mississippi lead district shipped more than fifty-four million pounds of lead in a single year, and by eighteen fifty-two the region accounted for roughly eighty-seven percent of the entire national output.

Then came the California Gold Rush, and Galena's population followed the gold. Lead prices fell. The town never vanished, but it stopped growing. That accident of timing produced one of the most perfectly preserved mid-nineteenth-century streetscapes in the country. Because Galena did not boom into the twentieth century, developers had little incentive to tear down the old buildings. Today eighty-five percent of the town falls within the National Register historic district, encompassing more than eight hundred properties.

The town's most famous resident arrived at the low point of its fortunes. Ulysses S. Grant came to Galena in eighteen sixty to work in his family's leather goods store. He left the following year when the Civil War broke out, returned in eighteen sixty-five as the conquering general of the Union, and accepted the gift of a house from grateful local Republicans. That house still stands on Bouthillier Street, an Italianate home that served as his campaign headquarters during the presidential race of eighteen sixty-eight.